Posts Tagged ‘bay area healthy things to do’

A couple is guided through the Osmosis experience with walks through the beautiful gardens and bamboo pathways along the banks of Salmon Creek in California. Witness the unique spa experience that Osmosis offers its guests. Guided through heavenly gardens to receive world class treatments in the most awe-inspiring settings.

You’ll understand why this spa has been voted Best Spa in Sonoma County for 17 years running, and why it is a beloved destination of northern California.

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote this piece about the unique food program and delicious offerings at Osmosis.

by Carey Sweet

The spa menu at Osmosis Day Spa Sanctuary in Freestone offers the usual massages and facials. But the Zen-inspired retreat of meditation gardens, creekside tea services and pagodas amid whispering trees offers the unexpected, too: the opportunity to ferment up to your neck in wooden tubs filled with finely ground cedar, rice bran and plant enzymes.

So it’s not surprising that the lunch menu here is no ordinary affair, either. In a novel approach to spa cuisine, food is produced in partnership with Ceres Community Project, a project from Sebastopol that trains teenage chefs to craft food as “medicine for the community.”

Specifically, Ceres provides nourishing meals to people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses while seeking to educate the public about the connection between food, healing and wellness.

Three years ago, Osmosis owner Michael Stusser approached Ceres to cook for his luxury oasis, where clients come to indulge in the baths he discovered in Japan for soothing pain, calming nerves, detoxifying and brightening skin. The nonprofit provided some 1,000 meals a year, all cooked by its students.

Then in March, Stusser and Ceres Executive Director Cathryn Couch came up with a more efficient idea: The cooking would be taken over by Fork Roadhouse and Catering, a restaurant just opened by chef Sarah Piccolo in Sebastopol. Piccolo provides the lunches at cost to Osmosis, so the spa can continue to pass along a portion of each sale to Ceres.

“Because Ceres runs their kitchen with volunteers, they could only make up lunches for Osmosis two or three times a week,” says Stusser. “Keeping the orders consistent with our guest volume was always a guessing game, and there was waste.”

Plus, the philosophy of Osmosis, Ceres and Fork is pristine ingredients. Ceres receives daily deliveries from purveyors such as the nonprofit WHOA Farm in Santa Rosa — $14,000 worth of WHOA food last year alone, according to Couch — while Fork works with artisan producers like FEED Sonoma, a business that purchases from 50 small farms in Sonoma County and delivers micro-orders to local buyers.

“With Fork, we can order and receive lunches daily, eliminating waste,” said Stusser. “It keeps everything so fresh and still provides a very helpful weekly cash flow to Ceres.”

For spa clients, the community benefit may just be icing on the tofu. Lunch costs $20 and can be pre-ordered at booking. Menus offer a broad range of items, such as miso-glazed chicken with rice noodle-kale-arame kelp salad; coconut vegetable masala over brown rice; or tempeh with orange, ginger and lemongrass sauce over sushi rice and salad.

“It’s a natural, since Ceres is strongly aligned in our values for a core focus on health, wellness and vitality,” Stusser said. “And our guests tell us Fork is delicious.”

I went to the recent Wisdom 2.0 conference at the Marriott in in San Francisco. The conference focused on the meeting place of high tech and ancient wisdom. It was fully sold out with 2,000 attendees. The energy of the conference was absolutely electric, bristling with excitement and led by a new generation of younger people with a very different life experience and worldview having grown up with digital technology.

Here were the best and the brightest from Google, Facebook, (Apple was notably absent) along with many other major technology companies. Some of the most powerful leading edge corporations in the world with their huge international influence and financial clout came together to meet with leading spiritual teachers to explore how to adopt wisdom practices. What unlikely bedfellows.

A meditative journey through Osmosis Day Spa Sanctuary with music and ambient sound. Lyrically photographed and magical. Take a look inside this beloved getaway destination in West Sonoma County. Includes cedar enzyme bath, meditation gardens and tea ceremony. Nestled in the most magical part of northern California, this spa is a favorite destination in Sonoma wine country.

One of daytime television’s most popular talk show featured our Cedar Enzyme Bath as one of the Top Ten Health Trends in 2010. We took our tub to a Hollywood studio. Watch our segment on this nationally televised appearance! Our Sonoma County spa is a true landmark in wine country!